“How Readest Thou?”

Good Friday Readings and Meditations on the Mystery of Human Redemption

An Ecumenical Service of Devotions on the Seven Last Words at Christ Church, Windsor, sponsored by the West Hants Ministerial Association

Introductory Reading: Luke 10. 25-37 (Parable of the Good Samaritan)

Meditation:

“How readest thou?”

“Christ pierced upon the Crosse is liber charitatis, the book of love laid open to us” to read, Lancelot Andrewes tells us. That is the special challenge of this day which we call Good Friday. Luke, in a wonderful phrase, tells us that “all the people hung upon his words”. In a way, it is our task to hang upon the words of the one who hangs on the Cross for us and for our salvation.

We meet to ponder the deep mystery of human redemption in the passion and death of Christ. For centuries in the West, there has been the tradition of gathering on this day to ponder the mystery of Christ crucified through meditation upon The Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross.

And yet there is a challenge. The seven last words of the Crucified are rich and powerful, disturbing and disquieting words that concentrate so much of the Scriptures for us, especially those books which as Christians we call the Old Testament, as well as the whole story of Jesus Christ revealed in the witness of the New Testament. The Seven Last Words belong to the tradition of the Church in her faithful response to the Words of the Crucified as found in all four Gospels but as necessarily seen in relation to the whole of the Scriptures. We cannot ponder the words of the Crucified except in relation to the whole pageant of human redemption revealed in the Scriptures.

How, then, do we read? That is the question. Providentially, it is a scriptural question. It is actually Jesus’ question to a lawyer who stood up to challenge him. The scene is the setting for Christ’s telling of a marvelous parable, the parable of the Good Samaritan, itself the illustration of the answers about the love of God and the love of neighbour that he elicits from his erstwhile antagonist.

It may seem rather strange that on Good Friday we should think about this all too familiar story but, I fear, our familiarity gets in the way of appreciating its radical meaning. The question, “how readest thou?” meaning how do you understand, goes to the heart of our enterprise today and, indeed, to the journey of our lives in faith. It relates directly to the theme of the atonement between God and Man that belongs to the business of Good Friday. Something is transacted on the Cross for us and for our good.

Dialectic, literally, a reading through. This week of our reading through the Passion reaches its fullness of intensity on this day which, in a kind of wonder, we call Good Friday. The Passion in all its Gospel fullness is read in the context of the canvass of the Scriptures in their richness. What we are given to read is one thing; how we read is another thing. “How do you read?”

The lawyer who was putting Jesus to the test, trying to trap him in his words, as it were, ask the question, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” In other words, ‘How do I get the best thing going?’ Jesus’ response was to ask him, “What is written in the law? How readest thou?” The lawyer proceeds to answer by way of the summary of the law – the love of God and the love of neighbour. “This do,” Jesus says, “and thou shalt live.” “But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?” The exchange of questions becomes the setting for the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The parable is intended to illustrate those two interconnected loves; the love of God and the love of humanity. In short, there can be no love of neighbour without the love of God and our love of God is empty and meaningless without its expression in the forms of our love for one another whether friend or stranger.

The question, “How do you read?” means “how do you understand what has been revealed to you?” The point is that we are given something to see, something to read, in other words, something that requires our attention and commitment.

The parable in its deeper meaning is an allegory of the story of Creation and the Fall and of human redemption and pastoral care. The Samaritan who came where he was is the image of Christ. He has come to where we are in our brokenness and our woundedness.

The point is not just that the Priest and Levite “see and pass by”; the deeper point, I think, is that they can only see and pass by. We cannot heal ourselves or one another. The Law, too, cannot heal us; it can only convict us of our need. Nowhere in the parable is the Samaritan actually called the Good Samaritan. That is the title we give the story precisely through reading Christ as the Good Samaritan, the one who “had compassion on him, and went to him, [binding] up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set[ting] him on his own beast,” his body, “[bringing] him to an inn, [taking] care of him,” and providing for his future care. Might that possibly mean the Church? “The certain man” [who] “went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves” who “stripped him” of all he had and “wounded him”, “leaving him half-dead,” is all of us. Jericho is the biblical image of the worldly city over and against the image of Jerusalem, the heavenly city.

In the mystery of Holy Week, it seems to me, we contemplate the greater meaning and reality of the care and compassion of Christ the Good Samaritan. The passion is about his willingness to bear the full meaning of sin and suffering, of sorrow and death. Why? So that we might know two things: sin and love.

In the crucified Christ we confront our sins and we contemplate the overcoming of sin. Such is the mercy of the Cross. We behold the radical meaning of Christ’s Incarnation. He has come near to us to restore us to the divine fellowship through the most intense and disturbing act of sacrifice and service imaginable; it is the way of the Cross. We can only begin to learn about care and compassion through the intensity of Christ’s passion. Only as convicted of our own sinfulness, can we be convinced of the divine love that seeks our good. Only so can we begin to go and do likewise, the grace of Christ’s passion moving in us. Such is the love without which “all our doings are nothing worth.”

We cannot heal ourselves or one another with respect to the radical disarray of our humanity which is on full display in the Crucifixion of Christ. We can only read and let what we read rule and move in us; in short, letting the grace of the wounded healer heal our wounded souls. If we will read.

Christ reigns and rules from the tree of his cross. We read the passion of Christ to learn the lessons of divine love. Only so can we “go and do likewise.” Walking in love as Christ has loved us. It is what we are given to read. “Christ pierced upon the Crosse is liber charitatis, the book of love laid open to us.”

“How readest thou?”

Let us pray:
O God our Father, holy and merciful, who didst give thine only Son to be a sacrifice for us: Look mercifully upon us, we beseech thee, as before his cross we meditate and pray; and give us faith so to behold him in the mystery of his passion, that we may enter into the fellowship of his sufferings; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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